Gaming

Honestly, this might be a bit of a hot take coming in. But I don't think the lengthy tutorial is the actual issue when it comes to modern Pokemon games. Plenty of games have very slow openings, monster hunter is the first that comes to mind.

I think the issue is that the game doesn't actually have any depth behind the initial tutorial. Once you know how to battle, catch, and level up, what more is there? Barring competitive play, the basic mechanics are the entire game.

Legends was a breath of fresh air, because you did have to explore and learn about the world and Pokemon in order to succeed. Even if it was incredibly minimal.

If anyone is still reading this, my recommendation for a game that scratches the deep mechanical and monster collecting itch would be Monster Sanctuary. The story is thin on the ground, and the designs themselves can lean on the simpler side. But my god, I haven't seen an equal when it comes to team building or strategy. Genuinely fantastic.

Look I'm drunk I don't understand what you're talking about. I live in Japan, but pokemon has always been a mystery to me. There's the Pikachu, there's pokemon Go. It's just a game. I also don't understand this Lemmy business, I'm trying

I just started playing Violet for the first time last night. I noticed the opening "tutorials" of Sword/Shield took like 90 minutes to get through, and that hasn't changed much here. And I'm not looking forward to taking biology exams or whatever, I really hope that's optional content. I just want to battle my way to the Pokemon League!

When I was a kid I was super into pokemon. I loved playing the games and they stood out to me for one reason: they were challenging. My first game was Black, and I got stuck on the first gym leader for a few days, but when I figured it out it was immensely satisfying. I would hit roadblock, I would struggle, and eventually I overcame it. Then my friend introduced me to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and it got even harder. I honestly think that the final dungeon of Explorers of Time made me smarter or something. It forced my dumbass child brain to think outside the box and find solutions on my own.

Then Pokemon X and Y released, and it was the most stupidly easy game ive ever played. And it kept getting easier after that. Add onto that the worsening quality and I stopped caring about Pokemon. My friend who is really into Pokemon hasnt bought a new game in years, he only plays Romhacks or replays the old games.

I have heard very positive reviews of Casette Beasts, which appears to cater to the Pokemon crowd. I’m not so much into that genre, but has anyone else tried it? It’s on Game Pass as well.

If you guys are interested in romhacks/fangames/Pokemon games with a little more meat and difficulty to them, I heartily recommend Pokemon Infinite Fusion. It's based on FR/LG, with a slightly different story (but it's still essentially Team Rocket doing Team Rocket things), with the big difference being that you can fuse Pokemon. Every Pokemon in the game is fuseable, giving you a MASSIVE possible amount of combinations. You can play it classic mode, like a regular Pokemon game, but there's even a randomised mode which changes it up so every wild encounter and trainer battle uses randomly fused Pokemon. It's great fun!

As for whether modern Pokemon games hold your hand too much, I dunno. I do recognise they're made explicitly for children, so I can't tell you how much is too much. In fact, I remember as a child being stumped enough that I quit playing Diamond halfway through because I thought the gyms were 'too hard'. I still enjoy the newer games (I don't care what anyone says, I loved SwSh) but I don't let their shortcomings get to me as I recognise they're children's games.

I'd like a hard mode and a way to toggle exp share off.

Gamefreak clearly isn't interested in evolving their formula very much. Each game is designed to be approachable for young children who are potentially playing Pokemon for the first time. So yeah, there is a lot of hand holding.

I've found myself hoping the same thing though, that maybe the franchise would grow up with me, but it doesn't look like it is going to happen. I expect that we'll have to mash the A button through the Pokemon catching tutorial until the end of time.

This is what Temtem and Nexomon are for.

I think issue is Pokémon games are still made primarily for children with age between 6 to 12. There are a lot of older people who grow up with it and some of them righteous feel like they are left behind.

Knowing GameFreak/ the Pokemon Company, if they were to make that mode they'd have it unlock after completing the post-game and if you had both versions (kind of like Black and White 2 easy and hard mode)

It feels like Gamefreak has really struggled to appeal to the various different sets of fans post Gen 5, I wonder how much of the hand holding and other issues are a reaction to the backlash gen 5 sadly got.

I’m just replaying gens 1-5 over and over. I’ve had a few friends recommend RomHacks, and I’m thinking about trying some after finals.

Pokemon Legends Arceus was a real breath of fresh air, but it doesn't seem like GF wants to learn anything from it. Repeating something I saw on Reddit: Pokemon deserves better developers

I want games like the past, with almost no tutorials at all. Give me pokemon red, yellow where the prof is like, heres a pokemon, a pokedex, and some old guy will teach you to catch a pokemon next door. BOOM, pokemon expert.

I've played both PLA and SV and my impression from both was that the tutorial dragged on for way too long. Even as a new player, that shit should not be lasting for over an hour. Also way too many text boxes that don't change anything based on what you pick. Just let me play the game please.

I just finished playing through Pokemon Infinite Fusion and had a great time. I played on hard difficulty and it was a good challenge. Lots of content with a fun central mechanic. I also played it on my Steam Deck so I got the handheld experience. It was a little buggy at times(though I guess that is expected with pokemon now 🙃)

I think modern games in general hold your hand too much. Some small level of hand holding/tutorial is fine, but so many take it way too far. I've gotten bored of a lot of games before they actually started because of that.

It seems like such an obvious quality of life improvement to introduce a difficulty-like mechanic that asks the user if they are familiar with the series. That way, there could be two tracks to the start of the game: the standard hold-your-hand tutorial for newbies and children, and the streamlined version that skips a lot of the dialogue that explains what pokeballs are or whatnot. While I thought Scarlet/Violet wasn’t the worst offender of some of the recent series, this series HAS been going for decades now and I’d like to see them reflect this in their intended audiences. There is a large child fanbase but there is also a large amount of adults who play after having grown up with the games.